One Terrible Night

I wanted to share with you a life experience that happened to our family two years ago today. We lived in a very small, but very cute little house. We had built it about 7 years before, so it was fairly new. It wasn't anything great, but I loved that house, and had filled it with all the special memories of bringing two of my children home there. That is the house that I spent so much of my time raising those little boys when we were all home all day together. This is a picture of our house when it was almost finished.

At about 11:00 pm, we were all asleep and I heard someone knocking on the door. I woke Richard up, and he went to the back door to check it out. When he did, he saw the entire carport engulfed in flames. He screamed "We're on fire" in this horrific voice that I hope to never hear again. We both ran to the other end of the house where the kids were. He went and got the kids out of bed, and me being the mother that I am, grabbed five of my scrapbooks. Richard went back in to get the keys to his truck, and his cell phone. He tried to grab some pictures off the wall because he knew how much I loved every single picture. He made it out, and was able to back his truck out and save the dog. Then, the only thing to do was wait for the fire truck, and then watch my entire house,with all those precious memories, burn down. Here is a picture of what my cute little house looked like the morning after:

Here's my brand new Suburban:

Here's one more. It is the saddest to me because you can see Cade's little Pooh backpack hanging on his closet door.

I could go on and on, each picture just as important to me as the others. Richard's partner took these, and I am so grateful. I obviously didn't even own a camera (I didn't even own a bra!!), and even if I did, my brain was so shot that I wouldn't have thought to document it. I wish that I had more pictures of us through the next few weeks. We went home with my brother and SIL, and lived with them for the next 5 weeks. The morning after, I called my best friend who lives about an hour away, and asked her if she would bring me some clothes (underwear and all). Thank God, we're the same size. When she got there, we went to start collecting things that we woke up without: toothbrushes, shoes, clothes, uniforms for school, backpacks, etc, etc,. The list goes on and on. We walked out the house in our pj's. The neighbors came through, and dressed us and the kids (after Richard had paced the street in his boxers for about an hour). But that is all we had the next morning. So many people came through for us, giving us clothes, food, etc. It is amazing to literally have nothing. I felt very connected to the people who had just gone through hurricane Katrina. We were all homeless, walking through Target, buying toothbrushes!

Here are a few things I have learned from this experience:

Things that you think you "could never live without" - you can.

Yes, pictures ARE that important.

Even if you have smoke detectors, if there is a fire in the attic, they might not go off. Ours didn't start beeping until the roof had fallen in. We were about 5 minutes from all dying. We now have heat detectors installed in the attic.

As long as your family is together, you can survive anything. A couple weeks after this, a family we know lost a baby to SIDS. It put everything into perspective. All my babies were safe.

I could go on and on, with details of the fire, the aftermath, how we found a place to live in the wake of Katrina, how God has healed us emotionally (I'm still a basket case at certain times, tonight for example). He has been faithful. My children still talk about it, but don't seem to be scarred from it. I can't hear a siren without almost having a heart attack, but it is getting better and better.

Tomorrow is my Braden's 9th birthday. Poor thing, his presents burned in the fire two years ago. He now associates his birthday with our house burning down, which I hate. I think that will pass with time.

Well, go be safe, and give those babies an extra kiss tonight. I know I will.